Sanford Speaks Out is the latest blog sensation written, edited and produced by Sanford D. Horn, a writer and educator. Sanford will write about issues of the day covering a myriad subjects: politics, education, culture, sports, religion and even food.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Voter ID V. Genocide: UN's Quandary

Voter ID V. Genocide: UN’s Quandary

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

March 14, 2012

If this doesn’t drive you to the brink of insanity, nothing will. The voter identification laws of Texas and South Carolina rejected by the United States Justice Department will next be presented before the United Nations.

Activists opposed to voter ID requirements are taking their case to the world body on the grounds of human rights violations. The Human Rights Council will hear this in Geneva as an issue of minority rights with a presentation to be made by a representative of the NAACP, who claims the voter ID laws are discriminatory and will lead to voter suppression. Supporters of the ID laws believe, and correctly so, that voter fraud will be prevented.

Two Americans will testify at the hearing. One woman from Virginia, convicted of drug offenses, believes she will be denied the right to vote. This is a non-starter as felony convictions are a legal and automatic loss of voter rights. And the Commonwealth is not at issue here.

The other American, a student attending Texas Christian University claims his right to vote will be denied as his only forms of identification consist of his TCU student ID as well as an out of state driver’s license. This doesn’t pass the smell test either as the student is mobile enough to be able to procure a state ID, especially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a major metropolis. Besides, shouldn’t an out of state driver’s license preclude the TCU student from voting in a Texas election? Otherwise, get a Texas license or vote absentee in the state where you are registered.

This is an absolute absurdity that American voter ID laws constitute a violation of minority rights and an even bigger absurdity that the United Nations, a traditionally anti-American body, would hear such a case. Serious human rights violations are being committed in China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sierra Leone, Syria, Uganda, and countless other rogue nations where thousands of innocent men, women and children are systematically being used as slave labor, the victims of physical torture and mutilation, starvation, child trafficking, rape and outright slaughter.

Where is the UN when a 16-year-old Moroccan girl commits suicide after her RAPIST is allowed to marry her in order to escape a prison term and to preserve the reputation of the victim’s family? Amina Filali opted to down rat poison than suffer the inhumanity of living a life, if one could call it that, with the piece of detritus that stole her virtue and innocence, raping Filali when she was but 15-years-old. It is simply unconscionable that women can be treated with such disregard to force upon them such permanent pain and suffering, both physically and psychologically.

Where is the UN when a Ugandan cult leader, Joseph Kony, head of the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army has been on a systematic reign of terror abducting children to become forced sex slaves and child soldiers? Since his despotic reign began in 1986 roughly 66,000 children have been used as soldiers, many ordered to kill their own parents and other family members. Indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague in 2005, Kony remains at large, described by many as impossible to see as the wind.

Where has the UN been during the years of rebels butchering, maiming and severing the limbs of children during the ongoing blood diamond atrocities?

To make this all the more tragically laughable, is that the UN Human Rights Council includes the likes of such benevolent nations as communist China, Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba, Kuwait and Qatar, which only allowed women to vote in 2005 and 2003 respectively, and Saudi Arabia which won’t grant woman suffrage until 2015. In fact women still are not permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia.

Yes, by all means, this council should hear how the United States is suppressing the black and Hispanic votes because of the torturous, demeaning and life threatening demands of – wait for it – showing a state approved photo identification card.

This is simply a ploy by the Obama administration and the Democrats to paint Republicans as vote suppressors, when in reality they are attempting to ensure the sanctity of every registered voter’s vote and the integrity of all elections. Part of the proof comes from the state of Georgia which endeavored to provide mobile voter registration and provide state ID free of charge, and that was also decried by opponents of voter ID laws as discriminatory.

And why is it, I ask rhetorically, just the liberals and Democrats that oppose voter ID laws, while conservatives and Republicans support them? Is it possible only the GOP supports clean elections that give all voters the confidence that when they vote, those votes will count under a system of integrity sans voter fraud?

Thirty-one states already have voter ID laws and they are not designed to disenfranchise any voter that is legitimately registered. ANY account of voter fraud is one too many. And since Saudi Arabia sits on this Human Rights Council, it is imperative to disclose that although women are not permitted to vote, ALL males 18 years and older are required to obtain the state identification card.

And while the UN feels compelled to scrutinize over American voter ID laws, where were they in 2008 when the New Black Panther Party was busy committing voter intimidation with night sticks and bully clubs in Philadelphia? For that matter, where was Attorney General Eric Holder?

This UN circus is just that, and really, has no bearing on the legal system in the United States. Holder, however, is our problem and is without a doubt one of the most incompetent attorney generals in American history. While Obama will never ask for Holder’s resignation, he should have the smarts to know when he is sinking in the quicksand. And therein lies the problem – the lack of smarts to know what is in the best interest of the United States. The United Nations should be booted out of the country, relocate to Paris and begin anew sans les Etats Unis.